The Gospel According to St. Mark

Monday, July 23, 7:30pm

Veteran actor, Emmy winner, and PSF regular Wayne S. Turney has enraptured audiences around the country for the past 25 years with his singular performance of The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Well known to PSF audiences for his turns as Mr. Bennet, Polonius, and others, Turney breathes life into the character and words of St. Mark in the elegant cadences of the King James version. Turney is also appearing in The Tempest at PSF this summer. An actor, director, playwright, and educator, Turney is a professor of theatre at DeSales University.

In residence for 13 years at the Cleveland Play House, Turney performed in featured roles as varied as Custer and Scrooge. He was seen for nearly ten years every Saturday morning in Cleveland and other cities on the highly honored children’s show Hickory Hideout, for which he served as staff writer and won an Emmy.

A graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University with a BA in math and theatre, Turney accepted a commission in the United States Air Force in 1968 and became a SAC pilot at Reese Air Force Base, Tex. He served as a pilot of EC-135 Airborne Command Posts with the Third Airborne Command and Control Squadron for the next four years, during which time he directed a series of fund raisers for the POW-MIA fund, won several talent contests, and served as commander of Tops in Blue ’72. On separation from the service at the end of the Vietnam War, Turney spent three years at the famed Hilberry Repertory Theatre at Wayne State University, where he earned an MFA (and PhD ABD). He is the author, translator, or adaptor of nine works, including a musical adaptation of Dickens’ A Cricket on the Hearth and was co-founder, with his wife Rev. Harper Jane McAdoo Turney, of the Cleveland Actors Theatre Company.